


Falling

by BromeliadLucy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Misery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:14:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8080987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BromeliadLucy/pseuds/BromeliadLucy
Summary: When Hydra want the supersoldier serum, they will stop at nothing to get it. There is always a heavy price to pay.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been staring at the screen trying to write some fluff for a WIP for ages but wrote 5000 words of misery way too quickly. I don't know what that says about me...

_She was falling, fast. She knew it was going to hurt when she stopped falling but for the first time in three days she felt at peace. The faces weren’t flashing by any more, the voices weren’t screaming. She wasn’t screaming either, and she knew it would be commented on, how silently she’d fallen but she didn’t need to scream. She wasn’t afraid. She’d made the right choice._

**24 hours earlier**

“Y/N. Y/N, can you hear me? It’s Steve. Steve Rogers. I’m coming in. I’m unarmed. You know me. It’s Steve. Do you remember me?”

Steve stepped carefully around the corner. He’d made his way through the Hydra base unchallenged. There was no one left to challenge him. He’d stepped over bodies the whole way through and as the possibility of attack from Hydra lessened, his fear grew. He knew what had caused this. The building was dark, power out; the corridor lit only by the flashing red of an emergency light, giving him brief, bloody images as the red cycled through. Bodies, broken. No one alive here.

He kept repeating his call, his loud voice echoing through the corridors. He knew where he was heading but he wasn’t taking any risks. In his heart though, he knew the only risk was the person he’d come here to save.

“Y/N, it’s Steve. Steve Rogers. Captain America. I’m close now. I’m unarmed. You know me. Do you remember? Steve. You’ve worked with me for two years now.”

He paused at a door. Checked his comlink, a living body confirmed behind the door, just one. He rarely felt fear, not since the 40s, but his heart was racing faster than usual and his hands were clammy. He slowly pulled the shield from his back and leant it against the wall by the door. He rested his hand on it for a second before letting go. He knew the shield would make no difference but it was a comfort and it was a wrench to leave it.

“Y/N, it’s Steve. I’m coming into the room now, OK? I’m going to open the door. I’m unarmed. It’s Steve. Remember we danced at Stark’s party at Christmas? Remember that? Remember me? You’ve been testing my blood for two years now.”

No, don’t mention the blood. Think of better memories. 

“Remember the company picnic? You were there, I was there. All the Avengers and Stark employees. We played baseball in the field, had hotdogs. Remember me, Steve?”

He couldn’t stay out there all day, he knew. So Steve reached out and grasped the handle, turning it slowly, pushing the door open. The flashing red illuminated the room in stripes as the door slowly opened. A body blocked the door for a moment and Steve had to push harder, hearing the wet noise of a broken body sliding as the door moved it.

“I’m coming in now Y/N, ok? Just me. Steve. Remember how we played baseball? I remember you like your hotdogs with ketchup, no mustard, no onions. Do you remember that picnic?”

Steve stepped into the room fully now. The red glow filtered through but there was a small window in here too, giving just enough light to see by. There were two bodies in here, both dead. Steve was immune to the sight of death but there’d been so much here today. All Hydra, he knew, but he didn’t know how he’d reconcile the sight with what he knew of the cause.

He looked around the room. Spotted a shape in the corner, hunched over, shaking. He kept talking, moving closer, slowly, hand out as if approaching a wounded animal. He was approaching a wounded animal.

“Y/N, it’s Steve. I’m here. It’s over.” He stayed crouched, trying to make his 6-foot frame as unthreatening as possible, breathing fast now at the sense of danger, but outwardly still and calm.

A face looked up. Small, wild-eyed, blood-smeared and bruised. Hands were held out, shaking, as if she was trying to pass something over, to show something that wasn’t there. The face stared down at the hands as if trying to process what they’d done, as if they didn’t belong to her, couldn’t belong to her. In denial at what she’d used the hands for.

“Steve. What have I done?”

Steve drew in a breath, knowing that she at least recognised him. He knew from Bucky that there was a risk she wouldn’t. He almost wished she didn’t, wished she’d been spared being herself during all this.

He touched her shoulder, watched her jump in fear at the touch, but kept his hand there, firm, reassuring, safe.

“It’s OK. It’s going to be OK.” He knew he was lying. It wasn’t going to be OK, not for a long time. Maybe not ever. “You did what you had to do.”

She crumpled at that, at having someone there to take over. Brain shutting down from chemical overload, human and otherwise. Steve caught her as she fell, a part of his brain marvelling at the tiny weight, at what such a small body could do, and wondering how that small body could bear the weight of what was to come. He stood, shifting her body into a more comfortable position, and started walking out.

* “I have her. We’re heading back to the jet. Get clean up in here now.”

Steve walked faster on the way out, knowing there was nobody waiting around the corner, no danger, no threat, except the person he carried. She didn’t stir, deeply unconscious, her brain protecting itself from reality. He hoped she’d stay that way for as long as possible, until they’d worked out a path through all this.

Back at the jet, Steve laid the body down on the floor, silently, and nodded for Natasha to take off. The jet was flight-ready and it was only a matter of moments until they were airborne. Natasha put the jet into stealth mode, and then requested autopilot, the path back to Stark Tower long familiar to the AI. She rose, and walked to stand by Steve, both looking down at the body on the floor.

“Any survivors?” Natasha sounded almost hopeful, perhaps there was some light to this that they could use as a beacon.

“None.” Steve’s voice was flat, harsh. So there’d be no beacon. “Just the prisoners. They’re all accounted for. Fifty of them. None older than 12.” Natasha nodded.

“Fury’s has a team already out there. Medical, psychological, admin. They’ll be looked after.” Steve’s jaw was locked with tension as he looked down still.  
“You don’t think that’ll help do you? You don’t think she’ll make it through.” Steve looked up, met Natasha’s eyes. His usual warm blue gaze had been replaced with something colder, harder, more pained.

“Would you? You had the training, she hadn’t. I don’t think she’ll cope.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey back.

She was still falling. She knew it had been merely seconds, but her brain was running so fast that it felt as if she’d been falling forever. She was tumbling, and couldn’t see how far she’d gone, but she didn’t mind the thought of the pain, welcomed it. She smiled.

**72 hours earlier**

She was one of the most capable of the SHIELD scientists, shocked by the fall of the organisation she’d always loved, and determined to work on, with Stark now, still with a belief that the world could be made a better place. She’d been assigned to work on the supersoldier project, initially at a very low level, drawing blood from Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes, running tests, analysing results, but she was the only one to make a breakthrough and had been promoted rapidly. It was after two years of very intensive research that she’d been able to replicate the serum. Two years of research, 70 years of looking. She wasn’t one to be feted, preferring to stay in the background, but the word spread around Stark Industries quickly, everyone knew that the impossible had been achieved. She’d moved into the Tower for a short while after the news first broke, a leak from inside Stark’s labs selling out to the media, and stayed inside to avoid the circus.

‘Will we get another Cap?!’ ‘America’s unstoppable soldiers!’ the headlines were desperate for news and information and had pulled together every yearbook picture, university transcript, story from a neighbour, that they could, to out her as the woman who’d potentially made every American a new Cap. That wasn’t what she’d wanted though. The applications of the serum could still be investigated. Its healing powers. Its ability build muscle. She’d wanted to save the injured, not create soldiers.

After a month, the story died down and the circus moved on, and she moved back home, carrying on with the normal commute to work, to Stark’s labs, to tests and results and plans. She was just another body on the train, book in one hand, coffee in another, headphones in, backpack on, off to work. Nobody recognised her, she was yesterday’s news.

Except to Hydra. Hydra were watching. Hydra knew when she left Stark Tower for home. They knew when she sat on the train reading over results that would be meaningless to anyone but her, safe to take out of the lab as only she could interpret the writing to recreate the formula. Hydra knew that. They watched, and they waited, and then they moved.

She was oblivious to the world around her that night. Thinking about the company picnic in the sunshine the week before, the small pleasures of eating hotdogs sitting in the grass with friends. She had headphones in, didn’t hear the footsteps behind her, didn’t hear the van, engine idling, as it followed. The first she knew was a hand clamped around her mouth, a quick scuffle, and she was in the back of the van and driving off. A foul-smelling rag over her mouth and she was out, unconscious.

She woke in a room, lit by a bright overhead light and with a small window, the view showing nothing that she could recognise. There was a camera mounted over the door, directly facing her, its red light blinking as it recorded. She tried to stand, to run, but was strapped down. Her heart was racing, her mouth dry, her stomach churning with fear. She wasn’t one of the Avengers, going out and saving the world, she was a scientist, a quiet personality, preferring the solitude of research to company, not cut out for a life of fear.

A scrape and the door opened. A man walked in. Tall, charming looking, but she didn’t trust to appearances. Nobody good would be walking into a room where someone was held down with straps with a smile like that.

“Miss Y/N. I would apologise for the clichéd way we had to invite you to our laboratory, but quite frankly, your opinion of me is irrelevant. I will tell you what I want, you will deliver it, or people will suffer.”

She said nothing, sweat sliding down her back at the fear of pain, of torture.

“You can recreate the serum. We have your notes, we have the equipment, you will do it.”

She noticed a Hydra symbol, discreet, on his signet ring. Hydra, who had taken down everything she cared about. She had to be brave, find the strength to resist, to at least make them kill her rather than give them that power. She ran a dry tongue over your lips, trying to find the moisture needed to speak.

“No.” The man smiled at her response, coldly, without humour.

“Oh I expected courage, don’t worry. False courage. SHIELD always did love a sense of honour. You think you will resist torture, that you will be brave, that you will die rather than give up your secrets.” He came closer. “This. Bores. Me.” He spat the words into her face.

“I don’t have time for games like this. I’m not threatening to torture you; a broken scientist is of no use to me. I will be torturing other people. And it will be on your head, the longer you resist, the more people will be hurt.” He jerked his head at some unseen camera, and the door opened again, a soldier in hydra uniform shepherding in a terrified woman, pregnant, clutching her stomach as if she could protect the child within.

“You will make the serum, yes?”

Her eyes didn’t leave the pregnant woman, shaking with fear, held up only by the iron grip of the soldier. She couldn’t, she couldn’t give Hydra the power, but she wasn’t a soldier, trained to deal with these situations.

“N…no. I won’t. I won’t’ give you the serum.”

A backhanded blow to her face left her reeling in the chair but her eyes found the pregnant woman again, desperately trying to apologise, but the woman was too far gone in fear. The man sighed gently, regretfully.

“This is on your head”. He pulled out a gun from a holster at his waist and shot the woman in the head. Her body twitched and fell to the floor, a thick trickle of blood oozing from the wound. Strapped down, she was unable to scream, breath taken away with the sudden violence, gasping in fear at how casually someone could end a life.

“You have an hour to rethink.” The man and the soldier left the room, leaving the body where it lay.

_Stark Tower_

The call had come through two hours after she was taken. Nobody was expecting her at home so without the call, nobody would have known she was missing until she failed to turn up for work. So Hydra called.

The call was routed straight to Jarvis, as all such calls were, to be screened before being released, or otherwise, to Captain Rogers. It was a video call, and Jarvis alerted Rogers and Stark as soon as he had started to play it.

A dark room, a chair, a body strapped to it. The body of a Stark employee, one of the better known Stark employees. Rogers and Stark were watching, a team already trying to extract every bit of data from the video and its link, but nothing so far. The woman in the video sat, unmoving, but they could see that she was breathing. Unconscious but alive. They saw her stir, lift her head up, eyes glazed with some drug she’d been given, gradually come to a realisation of where she was. Her head turned around the room, to the window, the door, and at one point stared straight at the camera, meeting the eyes of those watching, unable to help. They saw her struggle against her bonds, unable to get free, and watched as her breathing quickened with fear.

They saw the man walk in, the back of his head appearing in the frame as he walked through the door. They heard him speak, heard her refuse. They saw the hard hit to her face, and then saw the pregnant woman shot. Even at a distance, Rogers and Stark flinched as her body crumpled. They saw the Stark employee, their friend, left alone with the dead body, instinctively pulling away from it as far as the straps would allow, panicked breathing all they could hear.

“Damn it, why don’t we have answers yet, where is she?” Stark was pacing the floor, knowing they had an hour before something else happened but Hydra were good and had encrypted their video link, sending it bouncing around the world before ending up in New York. She could be anywhere. 

“Will she give in, Cap? Can she resist? Will she die rather than give it up?”

“She’d die. I don’t doubt that. But I’m not sure she’ll let anyone else die. She’s not trained for this, to resist, to put aside thought of other people. I think she’ll…” He paused. The door on the screen opened. “No, oh god no.”

The man had returned, along with a soldier. The soldier was holding a child, shoving hi into the room by the shoulder. A small shoulder, shaking with fear. The boy was around 10, thin birdlike bones not yet filled out into adolescence. Skin ashen with fear, eyes filled with unshed terrified tears.

She couldn’t scream, there was no air left in her lungs for more than a whisper.

“No, oh god no, no, you won’t you can’t you wouldn’t”. She didn’t believe it, she came from a quiet background, she didn’t understand that there were people who would do this. It had to be a bluff, surely. She didn’t live in a world where children were pawns in a deadly game.

“Will you make the serum?” The man sounded bored, as if this was an everyday question in an everyday situation.

“You won’t, you wouldn’t, you can’t, I won’t, I won’t, I can’t, oh god don’t, I can’t”, she couldn’t give Hydra the serum, the kind of organisation that would murder pregnant women, threaten children. She couldn’t. But she didn’t believe they would really harm the boy. They’d pretend, take him outside, shoot into the air, tell her he was dead. But they didn’t.

The man turned, and shot the boy though the head. His body fell, limp and tiny, over the body of the woman, as if they were comforting each other. She screamed, over and over, unable to tear her eyes away, her throat bloody and eventually silent as her vocal chords were torn, but still unable to stop screaming silently.

The man slapped her again, hard, her eyes jerking to meet his.

“There are more children here. How many deaths will you have on your hands? The serum. One hour to decide.”

_Stark Tower_

The room was silent, the team in shock. They knew the brutality of hydra, knew there were no limits, but to see it played out unable to help, left them sick to the core.

Stark was the first to break the silence.

“Find her, damn it, find her, why have you stopped?” His voice was cracked with emotion, his eyes wandering back to the screen over and over. On the screen, she was sobbing, her body wracked with waves of retching and begging though she was alone in the room but for two silent bodies, their presence a recrimination.

“She’ll give now.” Steve spoke grimly, but without resentment. “She will feel she has no choice. She can’t let more children die.” He paused. “I would make the same decision.”

It was no longer about whether Hydra would get the serum, but when.

“Will she make it right? Do you think? She may do something wrong.” Stark was hopeful but Rogers shook his head.

“They’ll have thought of that. There’ll be safeguards.”

He was right. An hour later the man returned, with the soldier. The soldier was carrying a small girl, small enough it was quicker to carry her than wait for her small legs to walk. It was horrific to see the way she clung on around his neck, used to the safety of someone’s arms, unknowing that this soldier was carrying her to death.

“The serum?”

“Yes.”

The man nodded, dismissed the soldier. Still tied to the chair, she let out a gasp of relief as the girl was taken away.

The man came closer, gripped her jaw hard and turned his head towards his, forcing eye contact.

“Now you are thinking that you will do something wrong. Make a version that will kill anyone who receives it. You won’t. I was going to say we will give it to you to test it, but then you might make a version to kill yourself. We won’t. You will make the serum, correctly, and we will choose a child, and you will inject that child. When that child survives, we will know we can trust your serum. If the child dies, it is a third death on your hands, and we begin again. Understand?” She nodded, her face bruised by his hand. 

In Stark Tower, Rogers punched a hole in the wall in his anguish, harshly yelling ‘find her’ to the team, knowing they were doing all they could.

**48 hours ago**

She’d been put in a lab, supervised by technicians and soldiers. Every move monitored. She’d been given food but was too nauseated to eat. She wasn’t allowed to touch the equipment, they knew she would smash a beaker and slit her wrists, or try to drink some of the chemicals. She was sat, strapped down, with her laptop and notes in front of her, unable even to turn a page in case she tore up the paper. Another camera, light blinking, recorded and transmitted her every move.

A child was sat in one corner of the room, a reminder to her of what she risked if she made any mistakes. Her eyes returned to the child without realising, each time snapping back to the pages as she gave orders to the scientists. Her head throbbed with pain and fear, and she had to struggle to read her notes, to decipher the formulae, but her eyes would rise to the child again and she would focus and work on.

**28 hours ago**

Once known, it was a simple formula to produce. A precise mix, not something you could stumble on accidentally, but enough to change the recipient; to change the world. She came to the end of the process, looked up, her mind numb with exhaustion now, with a wish to end all this, but not knowing what their plans were for her after this.

“That’s it.” 

The technicians looked up, startled, it seemed too simple. A radio call and the man reappeared. He nodded, satisfied, believing she had been worn down to a strange acceptance of her fate. 

“Unstrap her.”

He moved to stand near her. Her body by now so exhausted there was no threat.

“You will give the injection. If you have made any error, you will know exactly how that death is on your hands. You will hold the child and soothe him as you put the needle in and you will hold him through the process and if he dies you will watch the light leave his eyes.” It was a statement not a question. It was a glimmer of hope. She nodded.

The boy was almost asleep now, his fear at this strange place overlaid with its familiarity now, by the long hours of sitting and waiting. She pulled him onto her lap, wrapping her arm around him to hold him close as she whispered gentle words into his ear, meaningless but calming. Her arm, next to his as it encircled his small body, was not much bigger, both pale in the harsh light. They passed her the needle, watchfully, waiting, and she bowed her head over the boy, her hair dropping down to create a curtain, protecting the moment from prying eyes. The needle plunged in, the boy yelping with a sharp scratch. she let the needle drop, keeping her head low, low enough to hide the puncture mark on her own arm, the pinch mark she’d made on the boy to make him cry out. Low enough to hide the rapid change in her breathing, her temperature, her eyes burning. The boy felt the heat rising and felt unsure and afraid, wriggling to get away but the watching eyes attributed this to the serum action, as she held him still, whispering gently to him again.

The serum she had created was more advanced than that given to Captain Rogers. Seventy years of technology had allowed for faster changes, removed the need for the Vita-Rays, created new ways of getting the serum to the places it was needed, within seconds. She could feel her body changing in unknown and unknowable ways, muscles responding faster, heart stronger, every sense enhanced. Looking down she saw her skin moving as if something strange crawled beneath it, could feel it hardening, the boy wriggling in discomfort again as the soft flesh against which he was leaning turned stone-like and unresisting. She felt her mind reach out, able to sense every presence in the building from behind her curtain of hair, able to hear the whispers of their minds, able to force those minds elsewhere.

“Stand up. I want to see it working.” 

All this had taken just seconds, her mind now working so much faster than normal. Still with her head bowed, she stood, putting the boy to rest on his feet, slightly protected by her side.

“Nothing’s changed. What have you done? Bring him here.” 

He gestured to one of the soldiers, who approached. She raised her head as he did so and the soldier paused, uncertain, looking back at the man. 

“Her eyes…”

At that, the man looked up, met her eyes, noted the changes to her skin, the muscles beneath her clothes. His eyes glanced down, saw the drop of blood still on her skin from the needle mark. His jaw clenched, teeth gritted in a grimace of fury, as he pulled his gun and lifted it towards her. 

Her mind working so much faster, it was like watching his arm raise I slow motion. She pushed the boy behind her with one hand, reaching for the soldier with the other, even as she saw his eyes widen with fear. Her brain was no longer human, an animal living on fear and violence. Fuelled by the need to escape, for revenge, to destroy. One snap and the soldier’s neck was broken, and his body was flung at the man, knocking the gun from his hand. The technicians were the next to die, her brain seeing only enemies, unable to think any longer.

In Stark Tower, Rogers watched, face a picture of horror, as she slammed out of the room, bodies still falling. His eyes met Stark’s, the whole event from injection to an empty room taking barely a minute.

A voice spoke from the corner of the room.

“We have the location” and Steve was running to the jet, calling to Natasha to power up as he ran.

**24 hours ago**

The Hydra base wasn’t large, a centre for scientific research not military, but there were enough soldiers to put up some degree of resistance as word spread. She ran, heedless, through onslaughts of bullets, head down, skin and bone and sinew hardened and barely damaged. Bones cracked. Bodies fell. Power was cut but her senses were enhanced enough that the dark hindered only her enemy and she barely noticed it.

She came across a locked area, broke a guard’s fingers until he typed in the code, then flung him at the wall opposite, already moving on as he slid down. Cells full of children, staring at her fearfully. A soldier, shooting pointlessly. She grabbed at the gun, hit the man with the butt end and wrapped her hands around his neck before the sound of crying cut through the rage. She turned, to see the children huddling at the far end of their cells away from her, as afraid of her as they had ben of the Hydra guards. A wave of horror threatened to choke her, but the rage was insatiable. She dragged the soldier out, unwilling to let him live but unwilling to let the children see him die.

With the base silent, her mind sent out tendrils of thought, seeking for life, but other than the children’s fear, there was nothing left alive. The rage died down, sated, and she stumbled back to the first room, unconsciously seeking a place where she’d last been human. She slammed the door, sobbing as she tripped on the bodies of the pregnant woman and boy, and curled into a corner, rocking with fear and horror at her actions.

**12 hours earlier**

She had woken, cleaned, wounds dressed, in the peaceful clinical surroundings of Stark’s medical floor. Rested, washed, but internally screaming. Rogers was sitting by the bed and looked up as she awoke. He didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what he could have said.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered through a tight throat. “I didn’t know what to do. The children. I couldn’t…” Tears were streaming down her face. “What have I done?”

“You made a good decision. Hydra don’t have the serum. The children were all OK. You did the right thing.” She could see compassion and pity in his eyes and couldn’t cope with it. “You need to rest first, try not to focus on what happened until you’re well.” He nodded to a nurse, who walked over and injected something into an IV stand above her. She felt herself dropping under the weight of the sedative, but the serum wouldn’t let her rest. She had to remember. Every face, every enemy, every Hydra agent. Every one had been a brother, a sister, a son or daughter. A friend. A parent. There was blood on her hands and it was too much to ever wipe out.

**Now**

When she woke again, Rogers was gone. The lighting was low and the floor silent. She stood, pulled out the monitors and tubes, knowing that they’d set alarms off and someone wold come soon. Quickly, she walked to the door and to the elevator. Her skin was hot still with the serum but her mind was icily cold in its decision. She entered the elevator, pressed the button, heard someone calling out as the doors shut, but it was too late.

Her notes, without her, were no good. She’d been in the process of writing them up for Stark and Banner but there’d been no hurry, the research still needed perfecting and there was all the time in the world for a young researcher. But without that researcher, there was nothing, and it might be another 70 years before there was. 

The elevator stopped at the roof garden and she stepped out, the wind blowing harshly up here despite the summer heat. Her bare feet felt cool on the grass and she remembered the picnic, the taste of hot dogs, the feel of the grass on the back of her legs as she sat. She faltered slightly as she remembered leaning back against Steve, his muscles warm behind her, his arm around her.

“How does it feel to be the hero for a bit?” he’d whispered near her ear, her skin tingling at the feel of his breath on her. “You’d better not make too many Captain Americas or I’ll be jealous.” He’d pressed a kiss to her neck as she’d giggled.

“You know you’re the only Cap for me Steve.” She'd turned, kissing him, his sun-warmed lips against her tongue.

Shaking the memory free, she stepped up onto the wall at the edge of the roof, hearing the door to the stairs flung open as she did.

“Y/N, NO, stop!” She turned to face Steve as he ran across the roof to reach her.

“I’m sorry.” 

_And she fell._


End file.
